i have a phantom memory that "The Phantom" is sampled in this
am I wrong?
it's a great tune in its stiff way
now this tune ("The Ozone")
reminds me a little bit of this Dem 2 alter-ego tune "Grunge Dub"
and one of Dem 2 actually had a postpunk / industrial background din'e?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
otherwise thoughm never quite love-loved the Renegade Soundwave stuff, there was something a bit naff about them (the name, the trying-too-hard-hard-man thing)
explored in this 1989 review
RENEGADE SOUNDWAVE
IN DUB
(Mute)
A smart move,
this. The voices were always an obstacle to enjoying Renegade Soundwave,
carrying as they did all kinds of unwelcome connotations: "street
credibility"; a clenched, unsmiling masculinity redolent of The Godfathers;
a blunt, thuggish menace that colluded with the confrontation-by-numbers
subject matter (gangsters, drugs'n'sex, petty crime, nailbiting). Eliminating
the human factor has the salutary effect of bringing to the fore Renegade
Soundwave's forte: the science of b.p.m., the architectonics of dub-space,
dance music as girders and gradients. More groups should leave themselves out
of the picture.
This
depersonalised dancescape is mirrored in ciphered titles like "Phantom
Sex" and "Pocket Porn Dub". In the RSW universe, contact and
involvement have been supplanted by voyeurism and the masturbatory pleasure of
'remote control'; "hot" desire (passion, narrative, motivation) has
been superceded by "cool" fascination (surface sensationalism, the
instantaneous, chance). The debut album dealt with these preoccupations
explicitly; "In Dub" transmits the information non-verbally but just
as effectively. Welcome to hyper-reality.
Apparently, CD
players fill in the miniscule errors on CD's by making a considered estimate of
what the missing fragment would have sounded like. And it's said that if you
deliberately damage a CD you can trick the
computer to compose it's own spectral cyber-music that strays further
and further from the organic original. "Phantom Sex" sounds like such
a computer impersonation of rare groove, the chuntering, clavinet-squelching
bump'n'grind turned to geometry. After this, however, Side One doesn't quite
zap the nerve nodes. "Bacteria" is stripped down too far, until all
that's left is a skeletal grid-beat drained of funk, plus some Andean flutes
and mandolins. "Transition" suggests a desolate, uninhabited
dancefloor, but is just too remote. "Pocket Porn" is creepy and
clammy, but ends before it gets going, sounds like an off-cut of a grander
garment.
"In Dub"
comes into its own on the second side. "Women Respond To Bass" is
still low-key, but spiritual with it: an almost ECM guitar twinkles in the far
corner of the horizon, intangible whorls and eddies of ambient sound flicker at
the thresholds of audibility. "Holgertron", by contrast, is upfront,
predatory electro, a stalking cyborg-tarantula. "Recognise &
Respond" elaborates a fantastical dub-labyrinth of archways and corridors.
"Air Hostess" makes the album's solitary concession to "heart
and soul" with an interlude of lachyrmose chords, but is mostly
disembodied and decentred: at times, it really does sound like the body of the
song has been eviscerated, but the hacked-off limbs continue to keep strict
time. The closing "Black Eye
Boy" is the album's only outright dub reggae, with a mesmering cymbal
pattern and horns that plummet lugubriously into the abyss between the beats.
"In Dub"
is neither feet-motivating nor heart-pumping, but rather a cerebral pleasure.
At best, it provokes a detached, cold admiration; at worst, a blank feeling of
disconnection. It's asocial, an event that happens only to solitary
individuals: no dancefloors will be fired up by this 'dance music'. In the same
way that modern cyber-technology turns
the human mind into a screen, "In Dub" organises your headspace like
a mixing desk. Prepare to have your consciousness remixed.
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